SOUTH ORANGE — Seton Hall University will announce the results of its 18-month-long presidential search today amid speculation the Catholic university is abandoning its quest to find a priest to lead the school.

A. Gabriel Esteban, a Seton Hall administrator currently serving as interim president, is expected to be named the permanent president, according to sources close to the search. But university officials declined to confirm Esteban’s appointment.

"The university expects to make an announcement tomorrow, and so our important next chapter begins," Seton Hall spokesman Tom White said Monday night.

Seton Hall UniversityDr. Gabriel Esteban, who will become Seton Hall's interim president on July 1.

Esteban’s appointment would end a tumultuous presidential search that began in June 2009 when Monsignor Robert Sheeran announced he was stepping down after 15 years as president.

Seton Hall launched a nationwide search to find a new priest to become the 20th president of New Jersey’s largest Catholic college. The search committee named two finalists: Monsignor Stuart Swetland, a professor of Christian ethics at Mount St. Mary’s University in Maryland, and the Rev. Kevin Mackin, president of Mount Saint Mary College in New York.

Mackin dropped out of the race after a few days, saying he wanted to stay at his current college. Swetland withdrew his name a few weeks later after some at the university complained he had asked for an annual salary of nearly $300,000 and other perks during preliminary negotiations.

Sheeran, the previous president, earned approximately $31,000 as president of the 9,000-student university, following the tradition of low pay for priest-presidents at many other Catholic colleges.

Esteban, 48, was appointed to a one-year term as interim president in June while the Seton Hall Board of Regents regrouped.

Esteban, a native of the Philippines, had served as Seton Hall’s provost since 2007 and had a good relationship with many at the university. His daughter, Ysabella, is a Seton Hall undergraduate.

Last year, the university’s regents rejected calls from some of the faculty and alumni to open up the presidential search to non-priests.

"The board feels Seton Hall’s Catholic mission would be best served by a priest as president," White, Seton Hall’s spokesman, said in June.

However, last spring’s embarrassing withdrawal of the two priests who selected as finalists for the Seton Hall job prompted the board to reconsider. The regents, headed by former energy company CEO Patrick Murray, spent months debating whether to launch a second nationwide hunt for a priest, according to sources close to the search. The sources declined to be named because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the presidential search.

If the Seton Hall board names Esteban as its new president, it will not be the first time the Catholic university has veered from its tradition of having a priest in its top job. In 1977, Robert Conley was appointed Seton Hall’s first lay president, according to a campus history written by Seton Hall archivist Alan Delozier.

The number of priests and nuns leading colleges has steadily declined nationwide in recent years as the pool of religious candidates has shrunk. Saint Peter’s College in Jersey City and Caldwell College in Essex County recently abandoned their tradition of having religious leaders and appointed lay presidents.